Practically Magic
by corikane
Summary: This is a meshing of Pitch Perfect and Practical Magic - it's not, however, a cross over since I have taken the characters from PP to kind of inhabit the magical realm of PM (if that makes any sense at all). But wherever it comes from, there's no copyright infringement intended.
1. Prologue

**A/N: I had this idea of somehow combining Pitch Perfect and Practical Magic - two movies that I love. I'm not sure about this idea at all and it could turn out to be a disaster - or worse: incomplete. But I'm trying and I hope you like, as always.**

* * *

Beca Mitchell's parents died. It wasn't one of those instances where your parents end their lives together in a car or plane crash. Celia Mitchell died when her daughter was born, Beca's father died of a heart attack at 42 - it was tragic but these things happened. Kids became orphans and nobody could do anything about it. And Beca could count herself lucky - not that lucky could really apply for someone who'd lost both her parents at a young age - because she had relatives that were willing to take her in, give her a room to call her own, food and as many hugs as she could handle - which wasn't that many, she just wasn't a hugger. Her aunts - Frances and Jet - bestowed on her as normal a home as they could but her status as poor orphan wasn't the only thing that made her life among peers difficult: she was supposed to be the descendant of - can you believe it? - witches, her aunts were supposed to be... witches, the whole freaking town she came to live in after her father's death believed in... witches!

When she first learned about this baffling phenomenon - months after she'd come to live with her aunts, her grief had blinded her to minor matters before - she couldn't quite believe it. Her aunts, those old-fashioned, sweet ladies witches? Certainly, aunt Frances had a wicked sense of humor, and they grew herbs in the garden and sometimes brewed stuff in their kitchen that smelled funny and wasn't for eating but if anything that spelled bad cook in her book, not witches.

But then one evening, Beca had lived with her aunts for about half a year then, the aunts sat her down for a talk. It wasn't the kind of talk a young lady her age - she was 11 then - was expecting to get, she was told plain and simple that, yes, her aunts were witches, their female ancestors had been witches and she was supposed to be one herself. At first, Beca thought it was a joke and not a very funny one but as her aunts talked to her of spells and magic quite seriously she found it more of a cruel one. And life wasn't wont to cure her of that conviction. Somehow she felt that she could have endured the fear and contempt of her peers better if she could have told herself that it wasn't true, that they were mere idiots blinded by prejudices and hypocrisy. But whenever her aunts opened the door to some village woman seeking a love spell, Beca hung her had in shame because of the truth of what she was. It was always love spells those women sought, never a spell to make a harvest grow, or for sunshine on a rainy day, or even something as simple as a friendly word from someone they'd known all their life and never quite gotten along with. No, it was all about love. And Beca, knowing that her father had never loved anyone but her mother, that he had literally died of a broken heart - she didn't want to have anything to do with that.

While she couldn't help magical powers that grew inside her - and they did, she became quite accomplished at little things her aunts taught her - she promised herself she would fight falling in love, with all the powers she had. So, one night after her aunts had gone to bed, as the moon lighted the world in her fullness, she concocted her first ever spell - to ward off love:

"I will never love one who doesn't have red hair and shining blue eyes, never one who can't sing high and low and put all their love in a hug, I will never love who cannot break down walls or at least climb them. And lastly, I will love no man - be he ever so close to my ideal."

She thought she had thought of everything, there was no way love would find a way around these requirements and it made her happy for awhile to live in the knowledge that she wasn't ever going to die of a broken heart. But as the few friends she had - outcasts of a square society like herself - fell in love all around her, and one or two even with her, her heart was never touched, not with love. And sonn after, she entered a new phase of her life - college - with all the naivity of a freshman, and the innocence of a virgin.


	2. First Meetings

**A/N: It's all a bit sketchy at the moment, I know. I don't want to retell too much of PP's story line, there're going to be some changes to it soon. One is that Chloe's bf is not the guy you remember from PP...**

* * *

It was Beca's first day at college. She had taken a taxi from the airport to campus. She had come alone, her aunts weren't mobile (meaning that they neither had licences nor a car, their legs carried them everywhere they wished to go) and they certainly didn't want to make this trip a second time. They had accompanied Beca when she had visited the campus the first time, had disapproved of it and argued with her over the fact that Beca wanted to study in the south. But Beca had made up her mind, she would study at Barden University where it was warm most of the year - and where nobody knew of her family's big dark secret: witchcraft. She felt that she could breathe easier now that she was here.

After meeting her roommate, a seemingly moody, not very talkative Asian (maybe American?) and unpacking some of her things, Beca felt ready to explore freshman college-world and the activities fair that had been build on the university's quad. It was an exciting new world with booths, flyers, printed t-shirts and students calling out to her to join their club. Beca wasn't exactly loath to do that - as long as it had nothing to do with Harry Potter [no Quidditch], Wiccas, or math - but she's never been a popular kid, never had had many friends and she felt shy in this new environment.

She had wandered around aimlessly for some time, looked at some booths a little closer - big disappointment: the only DJs on campus were deaf jews - but hadn't found anything that interested her more than fleetingly when a mop of red hair and matching blue eyes caught her own. For a second, she stared and for a second, it seemed those baby blues stared back. Then there was a flash of a smile and she felt herself pulled toward this single table decorated in white and blue behind which two incredibly beautiful women stood. And one of them - the one with the red hair - waved her closer.

"Hi, any interest in joining our a cappella group?" she asked Beca, handing her a flyer. Beca felt tempted to look behind herself to see if there was someone else this beauty could be talking to but resisted it. She took the flyer - a cappella. It wasn't like she wasn't into music - music was actually her one true passion, something she was good at that didn't require any kind of magic, just an ear, a hand to strum a guitar, to hit a surface, make a sound - but a cappella? Singing to ominous nerdy guys beatboxing into their hands? Even she didn't associate with those guys in high school. And before she could stop herself, before she could even think about this for more than a second, she heard herself say - in that sarcastic tone she had:

"Oh, right. This is, like, a thing now." And she saw that door closing into her face. She didn't give it a chance but strangely enough, she gave it some thoughts the days following. Or maybe it wasn't the idea of a cappella so much as the presence of that redhead - her name was Chloe. Beca thought of her, caught herself looking for her when she walked over campus in the weeks following, even thought about using some spell or other to detect where on campus the redhead might be at the time or to maybe summon her to her dorm. It wasn't out of the question - but it was magic, also: stalking. So Beca refrained from those methods and just hoped to run into her again.

* * *

When it finally happened, however, it wasn't quite as Beca would have imagined it:

Meeting the girls at the activities fair had shaken something lose in Beca. She had always loved music, and sha had always loved to sing. It was as much liking it as the lack of entertainment in her aunts' house that made singing so appealing - they didn't really believe in modern inventions unless they could accomodate them to their magical powers, and they had absolutely no use for tvs or radios. She didn't need to learn an instrument, she didn't even have to learn notes or songs, she could just open her mouths and let it out. A therapist would probably have used the term 'therapeutic' but Beca never went to one, she only knew that it made her feel better - as long as the spirits that would come visit didn't start howling or something equally annoying. The turning point in Beca's musical preferences had been the day she had bought her first computer and had started listening to songs from recorded artists - she had had no idea before who Britney Spears or Justin Bieber were and her peers had found that very amusing. She had liked them but always found that these songs could be improved on and she did: she started mixing music - and her few friends had liked them, as did the people on the internet. But apart from sometimes singing on the newly mixed tracks, she had stopped singing around the house - her aunts had commented on it but she had merely shrugged her shoulders, not even caring.

And then she had met the Bellas and the words a cappella had stirred memories - of carefree summer days in the garden, being chased by aunt Francis, of melancholy autumn days sitting in her attic room, listening ot the rain pounding on the window in the roof, and of Christmas - which the aunts had celebrated for her the first few year, even though they called it a nonsense holiday - and spring equinox, and Halloween... and any ordinary day she would walk to school alone. Her own voice had been her companion when she didn't have any other. This was true once again but it wasn't the reason Beca started singing again in the days after the activities fair, she just noticed that she had missed doing it and there was really no reason not to.

And so, one evening, about two weeks into the semester, she came into the dorm's shower room singing. It was late, already after midnight and Beca really didn't expect anyone to be here. She was singing David Guetta's 'Titanium,' a current favorite and she liked how the acoustics in the room threw back her clear alto. Maybe that was why she missed the rattling of a shower curtain, the sound of naked footsteps on tiles. What she didn't miss, though, was the voice right behind her while she was adjusting the water temperature of her shower, a happily surprised:

"You can sing!"

"Dude!" Beca shrieked. She spun around and saw her - Chloe! - just standing there, in her shower stall, trying to make conversation. She tried to shut the redhead out by closing the curtain but Chloe wouldn't have any of this.

"How high does your belt go?"

"My what?"

Chloe shut down the shower while Beca tried to cover her... nakedness. To say that it had been a long time since anyone saw her naked was an understatement - it must have been one of her parents bathing her when she was little, or maybe a doctor - and she hadn't seen any of those since she'd come to live with her aunts, they didn't believe in 'quacks' either. And here was this... perfect specimen of a woman, also naked, seeing all of her. It was... uncomfortable, for Beca. Chloe seemed unperturbed, telling her that she HAD to audition for the Bellas.

"I can't concentrate on anything you're saying until you cover your junk," and that was painfully true. Beca tried not to stare but even though she was averting her eyes every which way she could see that Chloe was gorgeous.

Beca was still trying to cover herself and Chloe was still not caring. And then she was asking Beca about the song she had been singing:

"You know David Guetta?"

"Have I been living under a rock? Yeah, that song is my jam, my lady jam." Beca wasn't all that sure what that meant, though she thought she had figured it out when Chloe told her how the song build. She was also winking at her. The brunette wondered at this point if maybe she had fallen asleep over her computer and now had a nightmare but she doubted that even a nightmare could feel this awkward and uncomfortable.

"Can you sing it for me?" Was she even for real?

"Dude, no. Get out!"

"Not for that reason. I'm not leaving here till you sing, so..."

Beca tried to figure this out, rationally. There was a naked girl in her shower, a girl she hardly knew, one she had felt a connection with but had by no means encouraged to come into her shower for any kind of reasons, but here she was, stark naked, and she wasn't leaving. What could she do - other than to obey her, to sing for her? Nothing, Beca realized. She turned, still holding one of her sponges infront of her, and she started singing 'Titanium' again.

It was weird but weirder was that after she just let it go, after she just sang and have Chloe hamonize with her, it didn't matter that she was naked anymore. They sounded great together, their voices melted. Chloe's soprano was clear and endearing, just like the girl it belonged to. Her aunt Jet would have said that Chloe was light (meaning her aura), and for the first time Beca could agree with such an assessment.

They finished the song, they smiled at each other. Something had happened and Beca felt her head reeling a little - until she became once again aware of both their nakedness.

"Oh, yeah. I'm pretty confident about all this," Chloe said and it was obvious that she was.

"You should be," Beca assured her and there was no question about that either.

Chloe handed Beca her towel and as she tried to cover herself with it, she saw something... at first she thought that the light was flickering but it wasn't the light. It was a shadow, it fell on the shower curtain behind Chloe and then stood behind her. But it wasn't really a shadow, it was a guy, not too tall but dark, handsome, if one went for the bad boy type - and he was most definitely bad. Where Chloe was all light, this guy was dark and it wasn't just his eyes and hair, either, he had that kind of look about him and it made Beca shiver a little.

"You have a lovely voice," he complimented Beca in a thick accent that she would have bet anything was Eastern European.

"Thanks," she answered him but he seemed to have already forgotten that she was there. His eyes were on Chloe, all over her, in fact, and although she couldn't really blame him, his eyes had a possessive glint that she didn't like at all. Chloe noticed it, too, her demeanour became unsure, maybe even nervous, and when the guy walked away again, she followed without another word. Only as an afterthought, Beca heard her call:

"See you at audition!" and that was that.


	3. Calling Home

**A/N: I changes some of the second part because I felt that I haven't given enough room to the shower scene. If you want to go back and reread it - it's the part below the break.**

* * *

Beca wasn't quite as sure as Chloe that she should go to this audition-thing. It was one thing to sing under the shower with some girl and sounding good, another to step onto a stage infront of an audience... not hat she hadn't done that before, she had participated in her school's choir (it wasn't a glee club, her teacher had been rather old fashioned about these things). Still, this was different and she didn't want it to interfere with her internship at the radio station - an internship she had been lucky enough to score.

Since she didn't see her figuring all of this out on her own, she did what she felt was always her last resort: she called her aunts. She was sure they would give her some cryptic advice she then would have to figure out for herself and things would run a little more smoothly from then on out. This was how it usually worked. So, on Thursday evening, the evening after the shower incident, she called her aunts' house.

"Hello, dear, how are you doing?" Aunt Jet asked in her sweet voice that soothed Beca's frayed nerves. It didn't surprise Beca anymore that her aunt knew exactly who was on the phone, it was something witches knew (she had that gift, too, an intuition who was calling, even whether or not she knew the person; it made caller id useless).

"I'm good...," she started but was interrupted right away.

"Now, don't start lying to me, Beca Mitchell, you know better than that," Jet scolded but didn't sound angry.

"It's just a phrase, auntie. Though, I feel fine, just a little... rattled, I guess," Beca mused.

"Did something happen, dear?"

"You mean, you can't tell. I guess, then it's not that big a deal," Beca gave back. She liked to irk her aunts a little about their powers which to her semed kind of unreliable at times.

"Now, don't get all flippant with me, young lady, and tell... no, she' all right, Frannie, but I think she needs some advice," Beca heard Jet talking to her sister, muffled. The mood of the phone call changed immediately when Francis took the receiver from Jet.

"What happened, sweetie?" she demanded to know.

"Nothing big, aunt Frannie, just regular stuff. Classes, some work... some people asked me to join a singing group and I'm thinking about it," Beca told her aunt.

"A singing group, like a choir?"

"Not exactly. It's a cappella and there's going to be competitions and stuff like that," Beca said.

"Well, that sounds nice. Will there be any boys?" Francis asked hopefully. She herself had been married three times and held the opinion that love was something one should grab on as often as one could. Jet was more of the 'one true love' kind of believer, they would argue about this topic often and elaborately but never agree.

"It's actually an all-girl group," Beca answered and couldn't suppress the smile in her voice as she imagined Francis' disappointed face.

"Here, talk to your aunt Jet," she then stated and gave the receiver back to her sister.

"It sounds lovely, sweetie. I'm going to see what the cards have to say about it but I'm sure it would be a good idea for you to join a club," Jet said. Well, not cryptic at all then, Beca thought a little disappointed.

"You said you were working?" Jet then asked.

"Yeah, at the campus' radio station. Just stacking cds so far but I've given some mixes to the DJ and maybe... one day he'll play something of mine. I'm hopeful," Beca said.

"That sounds lovely. And this DJ... it's a male DJ?"

"Yes, very male, auntie," Beca laughed. "And British... not really my type, though."

"Ask her what her type is?" The young woman heard her aunt Francis from the background.

"Tell aunt Francis, not him," Beca told Jet before she could even repeat Francis' question.

"That's perfectly all right, dear. You don't have to... like every guy you meet. You know Frannie, she wants you to experience love in... all its facets, and as often as possible. But if that's not what you want... you're young, you have plenty of time to meet a young man who is more 'your type," Jet said and Beca could hear grumbling in the background.

"There's this other guy I'm working with, he's... well, he's a little bit annoying, I guess. I think he likes me," Beca said to appease what she saw as the beginning of another long discussion between her relatives.

"Really? What's his name, darling?"

"Jesse... Swanson. He's a freshman, too. Kind of dorky but nice enough," Beca answered and again the mood changed as Francis took the receiver from Jet again.

"Has he asked you out yet?" she asked.

"No, but I think he will." Beca actually made a face at this. It wasn't that she thought that Jesse was a hopeless case, he seemed like a really nice guy. But in actuality, he wasn't really more her type than Luke was. For a second Beca felt the sense of someone who might be her type, someone she had just met, but she didn't even let this feeling solidify into a name. She knew her aunts' magical powers were finely attuned to her mood and she didn't know how well this worked over the phone.

"That's a good thing, Beca," Francis told her. "You should mingle more, you know. You are an accomplished and lovely young woman, it's time you showed the world. By the way, have you found a coven yet?"

'Ah, back to business,' Beca thought.

"No, I haven't and I haven't been looking either, aunt Frannie," she told the older woman plainly.

"Honey, it's so important to establish good relations to the local witches. What will you do if there's a problem and we're too far away to help. And there's so much dangerous magic down there in the boons..."

"Are you talking voodoo, aunt Frannie?"

"Voodoo is not that dangerous, honey, it's actually not dangerous at all if done correctly. I'm talking about dark powers, evil..."

"Don't scare the poor girl, Frannie. Just because the south is a lot more spiritually diverse than New England doesn't mean there are all kinds of evil priests running around, looking for human sacrifice," Jet scolded her sister and took the receiver back from her. "It's okay, honey," she told Beca. "Your aunt Frannie has had some experiences in the past and, well, she's not happy with you living down there all alone. But I think she's right about the coven. You should really look for some witches who you can befriend, not just in case of danger but just to... hang around with?" Jet tried herself at modern slang.

"Hang out or just hang, auntie," Beca smiled. "I know you want me to practice magic more but... I don't wanna be an outsider anymore. I just want to make music and... yeah, I think I'm going to audition for that a cappella group... and they're all women so I guess it'll almost be like a coven," she tried to appease her aunt.

"Not all witches are woman, dear, you know that," Jet said. "But I'm glad that you're trying to make friends. And that you're going to sing again, you have a lovely voice, darling."

"Thanks, aunt Jet. I kinda missed it, you know."

"Oh, I know." And, of couse, she did. It was sometimes difficult to live with two women who had such strong instincts about her feelings, an intuition on what she wanted even before she herself knew. It was all part of their powers, of course, but to Beca it was also a burden of being see-through to her aunts. They didn't always say something but they could start to nag at her if they felt it was something she would feel strongly about. That's why they hadn't stopped her for bringing a computer into the house, and they hadn't stopped her from going to Barden. They knew that she was conflicted about her own magical powers but they also thought that she would make her peace with it some of these days. Beca wasn't so sure about this at all.

"Are things all right at home?" Beca askes but already knew the answer, she had instincts like that, too.

"Oh, you know it is. Francis is just a little more grumpy than usual because she misses you so much," Jet told her and Beca was surprised to know that she had already felt this. Both her aunts missed her but Francis, albeit being the dominant and more distanced one, felt Beca's absence more... maybe because they had a similar kind of temper, maybe because Jet was somehow more content or resigned with the path Beca had chosen for herself.

"I miss her, too, both of you," Beca said.

"We know that, honey. But we also know that you like it there. I hope you're going to have a wonderful time, you know, with all the things you're gonna learn and the people you're going to meet. It's exciting," she said and Beca smiled. Yes, it truly was exciting. Again, she pushed the thought of someone new and exciting to the back of her mind.

They didn't talk for long after this, Francis came on the line for a short goodbye and then Beca sat in her darkening room at the dorm, her roommate Kimmy Jin hadn't come home yet, and breathed easier. She would join the Bellas, the decision had been made. She smiled, this was going to be interesting. And she was looking forward to it.


End file.
